A Drill to Cure Early Extension

If you are the same as 65% percent of amateur golfers, you will probably have the fault of early extending in your downswing.  The term ‘Early Extension’ is used when the postural angles you have taken at address are lost during the downswing.  Your hips will move forward towards the ball, and your upper body will move away from the ball. Simply put, your body will straighten up from where you were at address.  If you early extend, you probably have problems with:

• Thin Shot
• Heavy Shots
• General poor contact with the ball
• Push and Hook shots
• High Ball Flight, finding it difficult to play in the wind

To fix this fault, and start hitting solid shots that start online with a penetrating flight, you will need to develop the feeling of keeping you lower body behind your upper body while rotating in the downswing.  This is one of my favorite drills to help you develop this feeling.

• First of all, I want you to take your 5 iron address posture, crossing your arms with your left hand on your right shoulder and your right hand on your left shoulder.  Also, place a ball where it would normally be, even though you will not hit a shot during this drill. Now, trap your 5 iron grip underneath your crossed arms so that the club extents out, pointing away from the target.  It should be parallel to the ground with the face of the club parallel to your spine.

• Next, make a backswing pivot keeping your postural angles. The club head should now be pointing behind you at about 45%, if you have kept your postural angles in the backswing.

• This is the key part.  I want you to rotate your body all the way back to impact so that the club is inline and pointing at the ball.  To do this, you will have to keep your lower body behind your upper body, like at address, with the rotation required to hit a shot. This will simply not be possible if you have early extended, losing the posture you had at address.

• Repeat this drill as much as possible until you have a strong feeling for how the hips stay behind the upper body as you rotate. Once you understand the movement, hit shots repeating the same body movement from the top of the backswing to impact. When correct, you will be able to compress the ball more, and with a solid contact, the ball will start online with a penetrating ball flight.

Here is some information to give you an idea of how important this movement is, and how it can directly affect performance.  When tested, it was found that 65% of amateur golfers move their lower body closer to the ball in the downswing, but in testing professional players, less than 10% have the same fault.  Clearly, this is evidence of how important this movement is, and hopefully motivation for you to work on this drill.